What a coincidence. I had to send my G4 in for some work. Got it back recently with a new hdd and just finished installing software tonight.

My "first" G4 had the speech module work--no problem. Tonight, as I was setting it up again, I got exactly the same error. I jumped on here to see if I could find out what the deal is.

I'll download and install SpeechSDK51.exe as well. Not sure what changed between the first default install and this most recent version, but clearly something didn't get installed this time around. If this works, it should be a sticky...

So anyways the only item in Tools is to "edit" voice commands. That has "add, delete, save, exit" buttons -- nothing to turn on anything. Then THAT tool says, "The Street Deck voice interface only becomes active after the toggle voice mode function is executed."

I looked at the SD command line swtches and only see options to turn voice recognition off (-NoVoice).

so - train the mic via control panel, and to activate voice input in SD, hit the space bar.

Seriously?!

Does that mean I need to have a keyboard handy at all times, take my hands off the wheel and eyes off the road to find and hit the spacebar, every time I want to say a word to recognize? Isn't that less safe than just using the touch-screen or a gesture?

Why isn't this on all the time, with some key trigger word like Mac OSX or any other sane speech recognition product uses... "COMPUTER PAUSE SONG", "COMPUTER PLAY SONG", or "STREETDECK FAST FORWARD" or "COMMAND STOP" or any number of other triggers to distinguish regular dialog from voice recognition commands.

I just remove the streetdeck program from add and remove programs in the control panel. I didnt remove the streetdeck file that has the voice and navigation. but all others I removed
and reinstalled the program. It worked, but I installed the older version. I will update to the latest update later today. But before I do, I will train the microphone before update. When
I used to have the mic working, I just changed the space bar to give a command to a button on my air mouse, that way I did nt have to use a keyboard to do speech. I just program the air mouse, one click on the mouse I could speak. Later im going to get it to work on my steering wheel controls. Hit the button to activate voice control, which pressing sends a command to cpu as a keyboard stroke. so you will be able to do it without taking your hands off the wheel.

Later im going to get it to work on my steering wheel controls. Hit the button to activate voice control, which pressing sends a command to cpu as a keyboard stroke. so you will be able to do it without taking your hands off the wheel.

I thought of this same thing today while driving to work and playing with a keyboard/spacebar -- just to see if this feature was even worth persuing further. I have to say it was less than impressive. I found myself saying the same words over and over and it not doing what I wanted. A gesture or using the GUI to navigate was the end-result in most cases.

The whole point of speech recognition is to take the mechanical aspect out of computer control. I.e. no buttons, levers, switches, keys, hands or eyes even needed to operate.

Why a trigger word was not thought of and implemented -- considering Chuck's wealth of knowledge on UI design and his degrees in this field -- is beyond my comprehension. Hopefully a future version will re-consider this critical (IMHO) design flaw, which for all intents and purposes makes the potentially lifesaving feature, nearly useless other than "wow factor".